


water wings

by colloquialrhapsodist



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-16
Updated: 2015-03-16
Packaged: 2018-03-18 03:12:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3553931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colloquialrhapsodist/pseuds/colloquialrhapsodist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>– three moments in lapis lazuli’s life. the dangers of hubris and complacency. <i>the ocean reflects the stars; it is not of them.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	water wings

**i.**

On top of the world, she breathes in stars.

They’re not the stars she sees in her dreams, when she has those – flickering images of other people, faces painted in hope and rage and happiness and wonder. All human things, or sad, silly things that Gems mimic when they have nothing else to do with themselves. Oh, she knows all about mimicry, and those faces were _her_ faces, and when the laughter reverberates off the broken pane of that godforsaken mirror she thought, maybe, she could feel it in her own Gem.

She turns her gaze skyward.

Silly.

That matters little, now. She swirls the water underneath her toes, letting it soak, the column lifting her higher. There is only the ache, the one tracing a teardrop into her back, holding herself rigid and straight as she basks in the starlight. The ache that whispers that she is free, that she is _so, so close._

“Home,” she says, trying out the word, testing it in her own mouth, one that seemed to barely belong to her. “Home,” she says again, taking her voice back, eating up the constellations, stars in her eyes. They aren’t _her_ stars, they’re just a reflection, but for a moment, she can pretend, at least – she can ache fiercely and let them guide her home.

She should have realized, she thinks later. She should have realized her wings of water could only take her so far. The ocean reflects the stars; it is not of them. She should have known she would be punished for such hubris.

**ii.**

She’s going to die.

She’s going to die here, plummeting back down to the very place she tried to escape from. Hard, solid rock awaits her, and it’s _funny_ , because they’re all hard, solid rocks, and that horrible Jasper creature is the hardest and solidest of all of them. Maybe that’s why Jasper terrifies her so much, because she’s never felt solid a day in her life, or if she has, she can’t remember it. It might have been before the mirror, before she twisted to other faces the way the ocean shifts to match the moon’s whims. Trapped by the stars, by the mirror, by the other Gems. Hard and solid prisons.

It’s funny, she thinks bleakly. It’s ironic. It’s silly.

The ship shudders around her and she hugs her knees.

What is it like, to die? The humans have a phrase. They think your whole life passes before your eyes when it happens. She closes her own, trying to think about what her life has been, what has been worth remembering. A whole lot of longing. Starlight. Shipwrecks. She can’t remember what her own face looks like. She hears laughter, and it’s Steven’s. He said he’d come back for her. He didn’t.

She supposes it’s hard to remember her own life when it’s made of other people and things that never happened.

She waits, complacent.

**iii.**

And then, her ankle tiny under Jasper’s hard, solid grip, the sky so far away, the rush of the ocean in her ears, she wonders.

Because she’s not dead. She’s not home, either. Whatever she longed and waited for didn’t happen. Not in the ways she expected.

 _Just say yes._ What else can she do, she wonders. She can say no. She can try to fly away, or to stand in front of the little one that made her laugh – a warped laugh, just his laugh reflected back at him, but still a laugh. She can say no, and be punished for her hubris.

She can say yes. She can let Jasper take over her body, her mind – surrender her form, mold to Jasper, the way that the mirror forced her to mold to everyone else. She can accept it, accept that Jasper won’t take no for an answer. She can hurt that little one, and it might not be her, not totally, but she can’t claim all innocence. She can say yes, and be punished for her complacency.

_Just say yes._

Or.

She can stop being what she’ll never be. She can stop trying to pluck down the stars, one by one, and when they won’t come down, forcing herself into them. She can stop making the ocean do what it was never meant to. She can stop huddling alone, drifting, identity-less and lost. She can stop being moved by every whim of every cold, hard rock from the deepest reaches of space.

She thinks of Steven’s face in the mirror. She thinks of the word _friend._

She squares her shoulders and unfolds her hand – like wings, fluttering gently.

The sea can erode away even the hardest rock.


End file.
